‘The Walking Dead’ season 7 postmortem: On Michael Cudlitz’s Abraham and his story

Tonight, “The Walking Dead” premiered on AMC, and with that of course came an answer to a question that almost everyone wanted to know: What exactly happened with Negan? Who did he kill?

Thankfully, the show did not exactly waste much in the way of time over the course of this episode, and revealed it relatively early on in the game — though probably not early enough to make some people happy. Given all of the time and the hype that was surrounding this story going into it, the show really still chose to have this linger for a little while. Heck, they even made you sit through more than one commercial break!

It was at just over twenty minutes past the start of the episode when Negan and his bat Lucille took Abraham from the world. In terms of what we’re losing, this is terrible given that Michael Cudlitz’s character is one of the most beloved, powerful people of the ensemble. He’s also enormously talented, and we’re sure that there will be another job waiting for him soon enough. Just remember that he came over here from “Southland,” a show that was already critically acclaimed in its own way. There was also more story that could have been told with this character down the road, but the writers clearly thought that this was the best way to shock viewers — and they certainly did just that, given that we also lost at the same time another prominent character in Glenn. On its own, that death would have been more expected.

In the aftermath of losing Abraham, we imagine that Eugene, Rosita, and Sasha are going to be the characters impacted the most given their ties to him. Overall, though, Rick’s group is down an imposing physical presence, but also someone with a ton of heart.

For more news on “The Walking Dead” premiere, including our full review coming later and much more in the way of reaction, be sure to visit this link! (Photo: AMC.)